Monday, April 13, 2015

Yemen Jews: 'we never felt welcome'

Eight Jewish families remain in Amram province, in northern Yemen. Ten Jewish families live in a guarded compound in the capital Sana'a. But they cannot, or will not, leave.

Photo: Nadia al-Sakkaf, the Media Line

In the run-up to Passover, International Business News wrote:

As Yemen's few remaining Jews proceed with Passover customs this week –
preparing to slaughter a lamb for a feast, buying new clothes – a
looming fear hangs over them. Their numbers are rapidly dwindling, and
for the 70 Jews estimated to remain in Yemen, Passover preparations have
been particularly rough this year.

This article, from the Media Line, fleshes out the problems of isolation and poverty among the remaining Jews:

[Sana’a, Yemen] Yahya Yaqoub swallows in fear every time he comes
across the Houthi slogan –“Damnation to the Jews” — which has been
plastered throughout northern Yemen since gunmen belonging to theShiite
group took over the Northern areas of Yemen including the capital in
last September.Yaqoub is the last Hebrew teacher in the only Jewish
school in Raidah-Amran, around 33 miles northwest Sana’a, where Yemen’s
final remaining Jewish community lives in isolation in the new-market
area of the district.

The current political and security instability in the country
following the closure of foreign embassies and diplomatic missions in
Sana’a has added to the Jewish community’s concern that if the Houthis
decide to strike — and with the absence of a state — there is no refuge.
Many Jewish men and boys hide their “payot” or side locks, under a cap
like those worn by Yemeni men in order not to be noticed and picked on.
Hebrew teacher Yaqoub, who runs the only Jewish school from a room in
his house where he lives with his wife and one of his four children,
does this as well. He used to have tens of students, butnow seven boys
and ten girls are his only pupils.

“We never really felt welcome in our own country in recent history,
but to be haunted by a cursing threat wherever you go and knowing that
the men behind it are serious, is too much,” he explained to The Media
Line as his eyes wearily searched around the street, as if looking for
answers.

The teacher was originally a blacksmith who “made lots of money,” he
says, because of his skill. He used to have a shop where he worked with
his son, Ismail, but claims that the Muslims stole his money, leaving
him to seek charitable assistance from philanthropists and to teach
Jewish children for token fees.

“I am owner of at least three houses but every time I try to sell
them the buyers try to cheat me off the price since I am a minority. I
managed to send three of my children to Israel and the US and I don’t
want them to come back.Now I live with my youngest son, Yaqoub, who is
13 years old,” he said.

Today, there are only eight Yemeni Jewish families left in Amran,
with a total of forty members mostly children, women and elderly. The
youth have left the country through various opportunities seeking a
better life elsewhere: mostly in Israel, the United States and the
United Kingdom.

There is also a Jewish presence in Sana’a comprised of no more than
ten families who used to live in Sa’ada, in the north of Yemen, before
they were moved and placed in a residential compound near the US
Embassy. The Sa’ada community has been threatened by the Shiite Houthis
who demanded that they convert to Islam, leave or die. For their safety,
upon the rise of the Shiite Houthi movement in Sa’ada, former president
Saleh reallocated all the Jewish families living there into a closed
protected residential compound in the capital Sana’a. Today, there are
only 46 Yemeni Jews living in the compound.

Jews in Raidah were less fortunate and the community dissipated in 2008 after the murder of one of its members.

Rabbi Yousif Habib, in his late thirties, left his home in Sa’ada in
2007 to come and live with the rest of the fleeing Jews. “I had to shave
off my side locks. I feel sad about it, because it is a part of my
culture and religion, but I had to do it to avoid harassment,” he said
sadly. Yousif said that no one comes back. If Yemeni Jews leave they
will not come back until and unless Yemen becomes a better country and
this seems far away.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)